ITV bosses were quizzed by Members of Parliament on Tuesday.
The Jeremy Kyle Show, one of ITV’s leading daytime programmes, was pulled off-air last month when it emerged that a guest of the show had died by suicide after being subjected to one of the show’s lie detector tests.
The episode was never aired, and the show was cancelled, though Kyle still works with ITV.
Today it was confirmed that The Jeremy Kyle Show would not be making a comeback.
“We will not commission a show in the future in this way, in this format, using lie detector tests,” ITV Chief Executive Carolyn McCall said in evidence to the British parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Those behind the show were castigated by MPs during today’s hearing, where committee chair Damian Collins MP described the producers’ lack of expert knowledge as “astonishing”.
Collins added: “I can’t see how someone can give informed consent to take part in a lie detector test when they have got no idea how accurate it is, or even what the range of accuracy is for that test.”
Executive producer of the show Tom McLennan admitted that he was “not a lie detector expert” but conceded that they were not 100% accurate. Lie detectors were a large component of the show, often used to purportedly determine whether or not a guest had been lying.
McLennan said of the host Kyle: “Jeremy did have a strong opinion about the lie detector. He’s got very strong views. He strongly believed in the tests.”
Jeremy Kyle himself turned down a request to appear before MPs, though McLennan said the 53-year-old “was a fantastic presenter”.
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